No one should be surprised to hear candidate after candidate promising to "change the ways of Washington" should he or she be elected--political campaigns depend upon such promises, and upon the forgetfulness of a populace that hears such never-to-be-fulfilled promises...

Is to give everyone a real voice in government. The neoconservatives have the equation wrong: they think it is necessary to destroy terrorism in order to make room for democracy; they also believe that terrorism is the result of a...

I’m not sure why, over the holiday season, I was thinking about end-of-the-world scenarios… but let me lead you, for a moment, through my train of thought. Fundamentalist Christians think the world is going to end, that that end is...

An earlier version of this essay was to be called “Hugo Chavez and the Dangers of Anti-Imperialism,” but I don’t really want to single him out, because it’s clear that Chavez means well, despite his flair for the theatrical. We...

One of my central projects in this blog is the clarification of the role of government, generally. What is it we expect government to do for us? Is government behaving in a manner consistent with the principles of its founding?...

The first constitutional amendment I would like to propose for your consideration is an amendment banning torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition. I present the text of it below, followed by an analysis of each of its sections. Amendment XXVIII...

There has been quite a bit of talk in the weeks since the November 7 mid-term elections about how voters have sent a “clear message” to government—that message being, one supposes, that we want to get out of the war...

For how many years has there been talk in Congress of "Campaign-Finance Reform" legislation? Does anyone out there reading this seriously believe that Congress is ever going to cut its own supply line? Its umbilical cord? Congress passing campaign finance...

Let me start with a question: is it possible to criticize the Presidential administration of George W. Bush and still love America? Does criticizing American foreign policy mean that the critic hates all Americans and wants to see them killed?...